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Comment Not At All (Score 4, Insightful) 189

I was a senior software engineer (now a CS professor), and I never touch-typed, and it never held me back.

The work of the programmer/engineer is what, 95% mental work, 5% typing? (to be generous to the latter) That's without even getting into rapidly-changing input techniques, autocomplete in the IDE, etc.

Anecdote: When I got my first engineering job in the 90's, I vented my frustration to my father, "The guy in the next cubicle is like 100 times more productive than me" (comparing a day-1 out of college programmer to a senior codebase expert who was indeed one those x100 engineers). My father's response was, "Well, he must be a much faster typist than you are", and it was all I could do to not laugh or choke on such a ridiculous misunderstanding of the job. Consider the degree to which that's a relevant assessment.

Comment CEO in over his head (Score 1) 75

A few weeks SO staff posted a "we're rebranding" post on the site in the Q&A format. They've been throwing out all kinds of supposed strategic expansions lately, which look scattered and less than coherent.This particular post generated comments and the CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar started responding.

Observation: The CEO (unfiltered by editors, legal, or PR) can barely write a coherent English sentence. They're not making any sense at all with their current plans, as far as I can tell. Their goose is probably cooked. Remember when Slashdot came off its peak and was sold and shuffled around a couple times by corporations grasping for some way to leverage its former popularity? Like that.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.stackexchange.com%2Fa%2F408825%2F341383

Comment NY Regents Testing Similar (Score 5, Informative) 337

Since 1866, New York State has had a standardized testing regime at the end of high school to qualify for a statewide Regents Diploma. Since at least 2015, they likewise goose the scores in a broadly similar way. You can see a scoring conversion chart from last year here. For example, out of 82 possible points on the Algebra I test, scoring 29 (that is, 35%) gets scaled up to a reported score of 65, qualifying for performance level 3 (out of 5, like a 'C'), and so qualifies for the Regents Diploma (more).

In the time since that's been done, the proficiency of basic math skills for incoming college students has become so poor, the colleges (like CUNY) have had to abandon the requirement to know any algebra even as an expectation to graduate college.

Comment Re: $5000 (Score 1) 323

yeah you want to spend your time at gas stations and breathe in gas fumes and spend more money per mile to get where you are going.

Spending 10 minutes looking at a map app 1 time a year when I'm driving to the middle of nowhere is a worthy trade off. Hell the car will do it for you in most cases, I just like checking ahead when I'm planning a trip (which I do, unless I'm going someplace Ive been before, I tend to check a map and figure out how long the trip is very Gen X of me I suppose). If you ask your cars nav to get you someplace it will find the chargers for you based on your charge preferences and you can just blindly follow its instructions. Not my style but I'm confident a lot of people do that.

People are just so in their head about charging which is barely a concern for actual EV owners instead of looking at the annoyances and costs they have dealt with for their entire life. Once you don't deal with them anymore it's really quite nice and the quality of life improvement is completely worth it.

Comment Re: Yes, but... (Score 1) 323

It's important to research that in your area, before I bought my ioniq I checked to see how common the fastest chargers were. Since I was going to have home charging I didnt care about local stuff (there are quite a few) but more about how common they are about 200 or so miles from my house. I then also looked at how common the slightly less fast chargers were and I decided that where I was that was going to take care of my needs for the kinds of places I was going to road trip to.

You should know if half your road trips won't be able to take advantage of that 18 minute charge and will take over 30 instead. That might not change your mind about a car depending on the frequency of those road trips, but it's a totally reasonable thing to research for the area you live in.

Comment Re:Technoluddites. (Score 1) 323

True, but home charging is way cheaper per mile and is often the majority of someone's charge. Ive also found that public level 2 chargers are very cheap, often not that much more than what I pay for power at home. Presumably because they cost a lot less to install in parking lots than the huge transformers for fast chargers. I use those often to top off when I am out and about.

Comment Re:Technoluddites. (Score 1) 323

My car takes 15-18 minuets to charge to 80% on a fast charger. Once a week or so I could stop at a charger about a mile from my house for a bit longer than you stop at a gas station, and that assumes that there was no place I was going that week that had level 2 chargers which are available in may of the parking lots in my area. Going to the store or a restaurant and coming out to a car that has gained 10% charge in the time I was spending anyway is pretty fantastic.

Mind you, I dont know where you live, I dont know what the infrastructure looks like but its stupid to shit talk EV's just because the place you live hasn't bothered to build out any infrastructure. If the US can manage it, I'm pretty sure Europe can too.

Comment Re: Technoluddites. (Score 1) 323

Because you don't need those miles today? Because if suddenly you needed to drive 500 miles today you would have to stop to charge anyway and that 20% really isn't going to make a difference? Because when you are at a charger on the road the time to get from 80-100% is significant because the change slows down and it is usually more time effective to add another stop to charge than to wait the extra time? Unless you are entering an area where you really need that extra charge to make the next charger that time ends up being wasted compared to getting back on the road and getting to the next charger sooner.

At home, if you want to keep your car charged to 100% then by all means, I charge mine to 100 before I leave on a road trip for convenience because its happening over night and Im not waiting. You are probably right, the impact on the battery might not be that bad (and if you lease, who cares) but you will almost certainly not use that extra range on the vast majority of days. On road trips it makes sense to stop around 80. Not that I have it limited. I often find that just the break and getting a snack takes enough time to get my car up to over 80% (generally takes about 15-18 minutes for my car on a fast charger). I let it charge more, but once I'm back at the car I get in and leave, I don't wait for 100%

Comment Re:Technoluddites. (Score 1) 323

Car based payment is becoming pretty standard and should make it a lot easier. I completely agree with you on the apps though, the first time at any networks charger like 10 minutes of downloading and configuring and setting up an account. More chargers should have a basic credit card reader on them at least to make this simple. I dont want a new account for a charging network I may never see again.

But if we can get to the point where you plug in your car and it knows how to pay for power that would make things a lot easier overall. They enabled that for my car but I haven't set it up yet. maybe before my next road trip.

Comment Re: $5000 (Score 1) 323

It really depends on where you live and where you are road tripping to. I just drove to NYC and didn't think about where I was going to stop until the car got down to about 30%. I was able to find my preferred charging network right off the road with no problem at all and was charged up and on the road in 15 minutes or so (after fumbling with the app, I haven't set up in car payment yet).

Of course if I was driving in northern New England I would probably spend more time planning.

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